New York Times: Effort to cap leak with top kill has so far “failed”

May 29th, 2010 at 04:04 PM

The technician said that engineers had come up with a variety of theories about why efforts have failed so far, and they were trying different sizes of objects. He said the process required trial and error,” and sifting through various theories among engineers in the operation’s control room,” about the best way to clog the internal geometry of the damaged equipment. …

The technician said that despite all the injections, at various pressure levels, engineers had been able to keep less than 10 percent of the injection fluids inside the stack of pipes above the well. He said that was barely an improvement on the results Wednesday, when the operation began and was suspended after about 10 hours.

“I won’t say progress was zero, but I don’t know if we can round up enough mud to make it work,” said another technician on the project. “Everyone is disappointed at this time.”